In a social media post on Tuesday, Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested as a New York prosecutor is eyeing charges in a case examining hush money paid to women who have alleged sexual encounters with the former president.
Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network early Saturday that illegal leaks from the Manhattan district attorney's office indicate that the FAR Messages left Saturday with the district attorney's office were not immediately returned. Representatives for Trump did not respond immediately to calls for comment.
Trump did not provide any details on social media about how he knew about the expected arrest.
In his postings he repeated his lies that the presidential election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was stolen and he urged his followers to PROTEST, which evoked the message from the then-president that preceded the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
New York law enforcement officials have been making security preparations for the possibility that Trump could be indicted.
Trump posted last summer echoed the news on Truth Socia that the FBI was searching his home as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents.
The grand jury in Manhattan has been hearing from witnesses, including former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who said in 2016 he orchestrated payments to two women to silence them about sexual encounters they said they had with Trump a decade earlier.
Trump denies that the encounters occurred, says he did nothing wrong and cast the investigation as a witch hunt by a Democratic prosecutor bent on sabotaging the Republican's 2024 presidential campaign.
The Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office is apparently looking into whether any state laws were broken in connection with the payments or how Trump s company compensated Cohen for his work to keep the women s allegations quiet.
Daniels and at least two former Trump aides — onetime political adviser Kellyanne Conway and former spokesperson Hope Hicks — are among the witnesses who have met with prosecutors in recent weeks.
Cohen said at Trump's direction that he arranged payments totaling $280,000 for porn actor Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen said that the payouts were to buy their silence about Trump, who was then in the thick of his first presidential campaign.